


Comedown

by heroic_pants



Category: Deadly Class (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, also there's no willie/marcus because???, and...no marcus/maria....why, what are we doing here, y'all why is there no saya/marcus tag, yes there are two maria tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:43:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroic_pants/pseuds/heroic_pants
Summary: Saya drives her variously wounded and traumatised classmates home from the mess they left in Vegas, against the backdrop of the Mojave desert at sunset. She reflects on a certain relationship developing behind her, just in sight of her rearview mirror, and how much it's not affecting her...





	Comedown

She looks at them in the mirror, snuggled together in the back seat, and feels nauseous.

 

She gives the road a hard stare. Scratch that, she feels nothing. That's what she does, she feels nothing. Always.

 

She adjusts the mirror a little, and it's everything to do with the road and not to do with how they look together, like home is a new concept they've just found in each other, more at home together than she's ever felt anywhere.

 

It's fine. 

 

It's not like it matters, anyway. 

 

Somewhere, some part of her brain that remembers stupid John Waters movies that Maria made her watch, thinks she should be happy for them. They're her friends, aren't they? Don't they deserve some small amount of happiness, after all the shit they've collectively been through?

 

But instantly, her less charitable voice says, “Why should they? No one else gets to be.”

 

She's not mad about this. She really isn't it. She's just annoyed that they didn't - tell her or something, like this was a group trip, no one was supposed to be…

 

She frowns at the flat Mojave horizon ahead.

 

Why did she come then? a similarly nasty voice pipes up.

 

She tries to remember her reasoning. Marcus had looked extra squirrelly, the way he often before he was about to do some dumb shit. Shit that she'd end up cleaning up anyway, so she made him tell her - it wasn't hard - and decided she would come to just make sure he didn't do anything too crazy. 

 

Then, Willie had ended up along too, after talking to Marcus about how neither of them had been to Vegas - a friendship she had not seen coming, but maybe once you kill a hobo together you bro-bo together? 

 

Although she was starting to wonder about whether Willie just wanting to be friends with him. He talked about a big game about fucking girls, but he also talked a big game about being a cold-blooded gangsta and she'd seen how true that had been. The way he'd been concerned for bleeding, half-dead, drugged-up Marcus rivalled only Maria's concern, and they'd both insisted on sitting beside him on the way home so he'd feel protected on both sides. So he could sleep easy for once. She'd caught brief seconds of him looking at Marcus’s sleeping form, when Maria was also asleep. It's not like she didn't know what it looked like.

 

She curses herself silently. Fuck off, brain. You wouldn't know what it looked like, because you have never seen it. Not in me. And not when he smiles that dorky, dimply smile -  _ fuck off, brain. I mean it. _

 

She doesn't accept this. She doesn't do feelings. And she doesn't really do friends. The clan aren't exactly movie night buddies with her.

 

This stings, because it reminds her of watching movies with Maria. Those stupid movies Maria loves. The one with the teens in detention - if that's normal detention in a normal high school, their recent one doesn't seem as dramatic - Maria was obsessed with the red-haired popular girl. She wouldn't rest till she learnt that lipstick trick, and she had been so excited to show her. Her stomach jolts at the memory, like a hook, pulled taut from her navel.

 

She wants to physically shake herself but she doesn’t want to let anyone know she’s anything but cool right now. So she settles for glaring at the road ahead.

 

It’s been a long trip, is all. She was still dealing with her cousin’s death, and then all of this shit happened on top of it. They almost died, again. Maybe that’s what this is. Leftover anxiety and adrenaline and various drugs, all swirling together. Maybe it will go away.

 

She wants to believe that, but she keeps thinking of the way they look together. So comfortable. She can’t even see them anymore, but it doesn’t matter because the image is there, in her brain, clear as anything.

 

When did this even happen? How much? How far before Chico came in, guns blazing? 

 

_ Stop it,  _ she thinks furiously.  _ I don’t know and I don’t care. _

 

They’d lost Marcus for a period, and she hadn’t noticed because she and Willie had been winning at craps. They were both fucked up, but not like Marcus had been.

 

Honestly, she’d assumed that Billy was taking charge of him. He was definitely too fucked up to be unsupervised.

 

And, honestly, too fucked up to be doing much of anything,  _ really.  _ It would be no fairer to take money from his wallet, even if he stuffed it into her hand, saying he desperately wanted her to have it. She’d thought Maria knew better - sure, she was high too but not nearly as much.

 

_ That's not what you're really mad about though...  _ That nasty voice pops up.  _ You’re telling yourself that’s the thing that most annoys you - the principle of the thing, that it shouldn’t have happened Like That - but really you’re just annoyed that it happened.  _

 

Unbidden, her brain continues to flash up images of them together. She feels sick.

 

Thoughts of them together, touching, holding, kissing, triggers other memories. 

 

The first, and only time she kissed him - to stop him jumping, telling him he didn’t need to be alone. He looked so -  _ defeated.  _ Dead-eyed, but vulnerable. She exploited that like she’d been trained. It didn’t count. It couldn’t. It was just part of the assignment. 

 

Dancing with her - she hadn’t liked dancing before, but Maria’s energy was infectious and before long she’d realised she’d come to enjoy just dancing around to stupid records. Like normal teens, instead of people pitted against each other every day. Maria’s tactility, the way she got in your space, the way you felt her affection for you in her laugh, her smile, the light in her eyes. Not things she was used to from anyone, growing up. Her woodsy, feminine perfume.

 

When she’d been drunk and just  _ so close to him how could she not  _ \- but he had other shit to cope with, and it was a good thing he’d left her before anything had happened. But he’d been so close, and she had been reminded of how tired, devastated, alone he’d seemed the time she’d stopped him jumping. He certainly smelt better at the party, but he had the same crushed, haunted look in his eyes. She just wanted - to stop him feeling so awful, to just - protect him for a little while.

 

She’s always close-by, watching, but always distant.  _ So close. The party. His stupid, sad brown eyes. The hippie stop bathroom. Snorting lines and laughing so hard, so close, she could have, but she didn’t. The only time she’s ever that happy is when they’re together, no trace of the fear that instantly returns when Chico comes calling. Or when he used to, more to the point. _

 

She feels, somewhere, awful for Maria. Shouldn’t begrudge her comfort, after all the night’s trauma. She had loved Chico, after all, even after everything he’d done to her. She just couldn’t live with him.

 

_ Somehow, you imagined it would be you giving her the comfort. You being the reason she finally stood up to him. Because even though you act like you don’t give a shit, you’d do anything for her, really, if it could make her feel better. _

 

She’d even do anything to protect that impulsive, bad-decision-making dork, and she’d barely known him long.

 

But it doesn’t matter, because he was the kicker for Maria in the end.  _ Because you made sure that he knew you weren’t interested in him, that he was just a burden. Or maybe she wasn’t fucked up in the right way, and his life was complicated enough.   _

 

Either way, it didn’t matter now. They had each other, and she had the weight of it all, everything, on her back. 

Just her now. As it was always meant to be.

 

The thought surprises her sharply, almost makes her cry. She focuses very hard on the horizon and pushes it down. 

 

She was never meant for them. They were never meant for her. Even if they were, it couldn’t just be one of them. Which is why these -  _ feelings -  _ were impossible. 

 

She imagines them spilling out of her, and dribbling onto the sandy dirt. Leaving her, like a fog clearing in her brain, so she can be what she came here to be. 

 

A solitary killer, no more, no less. 

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic for this fandom! I was planning to publish something else, but this kind of snuck in from the last episode... It went to a kind of bitter place, but I'm planning to do more that's not quite as miserable hahah


End file.
